Largest Fraud Scandal in Vietnam’s History

The money she stole could run a country like Jamaica for a year and a half!  And now she’s been sentenced to death!

A Vietnamese Tycoon has been sentenced to death for her role in a US$12.5 billion fraud scandal!

Yes! You heard correctly – US$12.5 billion!

Now I don’t know if you’ve been following this story, but buckle up because it’s interesting.

So, Truong My Lan is a 67-year-old Vietnamese real estate tycoon.  She was found guilty of bribery, violating bank regulations and embezzlement, and sentenced to DEATH for her crimes.

But her story is actually an impressive rags-to-riches saga. 

She got her start as a market vendor selling cosmetics with her mom. In the 1980s, Lan took advantage of Vietnam’s economic reform drive and slowly amassed an impressive portfolio of hotels and restaurants. She was pretty much a Vietnamese Jeff Bezos. But it wasn’t until her audacious move to merge three smaller banks into the Saigon Commercial Bank, that cracks in her empire started to show.

According to Vietnamese investigators, Lan and her accomplices reportedly siphoned off more than 304 trillion dong or about US$12.5 billion from Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank. 

She reportedly used dozens of proxies through other companies and people to do this, DESPITE Vietnam’s strict rules which limit large shareholding in lenders. 

And just for some perspective on how massive this fraud is for Vietnam, the money stolen is roughly 3% of the country’s overall economy. 

I live in Jamaica, and that’s more than the government’s entire budget for the year!  So the money she stole could run the whola Jamaica – pay teachers, doctors, police; fix roads, build schools, AND cover all our debt payments for a year and a half! 

Now, maybe you’re thinking the death penalty sounds harsh, but Vietnam is on a massive anti-corruption drive right now, so they’re using Lan as an example.

Her trial, which began in March, has played out publicly in state media. That’s a massive change in MO for a country where information is usually tightly controlled.

Vietnamese state media reported that 84 other defendants in the case received sentences ranging from probation for three years, to life imprisonment. 

Lan’s husband, Eric Chu, a Hong Kong businessman, was sentenced to nine years in jail.  Her niece received 17 years. Lan does plan to appeal the sentence, but who knows if that’ll help?

And that’s the bottom line.